"Who made the clouds?" Abraham asks. "Who made the flowers?" Even as a child, he knows there must be something greater than idols of clay and stone. As he observes and questions the world around him, Abraham comes to the conclusion that there is one God. A creative midrash about the father of the world's religions.
Abraham's God is the incredible story of the origin of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and how they came to the shared faith in the God of Abraham, the God of over half the people in the world. To understand the culture and conflicts of half of the world, you must first understand the beliefs of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Abraham's God is not a book of religion for the religious, but for anyone attempting to understand the deep divides and violent conflicts between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share the same fundamentals of faith in the same God, yet for most of history they have been violently divided. Abraham's God explores this divide as it follows the journey of the Jews as they develop their faith, then Christians as they built on the foundations of Judaism, and the beginnings of Islam as Muhammad brought Abraham's God to the Arabs. The story begins long before Abraham and ends in the ninth century, when Christianity and Islam had firmly established themselves as the religions that would dominate the world into our twenty-first century. In the thousand years before Islam, Abraham's God tells the story of how Judaism and Christianity evolved and morphed in ways not taught in synagogues and churches. It tells how ideas of other ancient religions assimilated into Judaism, and then how Christians divided in their beliefs fought for centuries until Roman emperors imposed by law the theology of Christianity today. Not all Christians accepted the rulings of the emperors, and Islam was Muhammad's attempt to unify the mystifying divides. Abraham's God is essential to understanding the division that remains today between Jews, Christians, and Muslims.
It is traditional to think we should praise Abraham for his willingness to sacrifice his son as proof of his love for God. But have we misread the point of the story? Is it possible that a careful reading of Genesis 22 could reveal that God was not pleased with Abraham's silent obedience? Widely respected biblical theologian, creative thinker, and public speaker J. Richard Middleton suggests we have misread and misapplied the story of the binding of Isaac and shows that God desires something other than silent obedience in difficult times. Middleton focuses on the ethical and theological problem of Abraham's silence and explores the rich biblical tradition of vigorous prayer, including the lament psalms, as a resource for faith. Middleton also examines the book of Job in terms of God validating Job's lament as "right speech," showing how the vocal Job provides an alternative to the silent Abraham. This book provides a fresh interpretation of Genesis 22 and reinforces the church's resurgent interest in lament as an appropriate response to God.
The amazing four-thousand-year-old story of Abraham from a fresh and intriguing interfaith perspective that joins together the scripture and traditions of five religions! The author combines scripture/sacred text from the five Abrahamic Faiths - Christianity, Judaism, Islam, the Babi Faith and the Bahai Faith - and combineshistorical data and archaeological evidence and identifies content that falls within the category of probably and possibly.
The NIV is the world's best-selling modern translation, with over 150 million copies in print since its first full publication in 1978. This highly accurate and smooth-reading version of the Bible in modern English has the largest library of printed and electronic support material of any modern translation.
This cogently argued and richly illustrated book rejects the dichotomy between the God of Abraham and the God of the philosophers to argue that the two are one. In God of Abraham, one of our leading philosophers of religion shows how human values can illuminate our idea of God and how the monotheistic idea of God in turn illuminates our moral, social, cultural, aesthetic, and even ritual understanding. Throughout Goodman draws on a wealth of traditional, philosophical, historical, and anthropological materials, and particularly on a wide range of Jewish sources. He demonstrates how an adequate understanding of the interplay of values with monotheism dissolves many of the longstanding problems of natural theology and ethics and guides us toward a genuinely humanistic moral and social philosophy.
In this book noted scholar Thomas L. Pangle brings back a lost and crucial dimension of political theory: the mutually illuminating encounter between skeptically rationalist political philosophy and faith-based political theology guided ultimately by the authority of the Bible. Focusing on the chapters of Genesis in which the foundation of the Bible is laid, Pangle provides an interpretive reading illuminated by the questions and concerns of the Socratic tradition and its medieval heirs in the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic worlds. He brings into contrast the rival interpretive framework set by the biblical criticism of the modern rationalists Hobbes and Spinoza, along with their heirs from Locke to Hegel. The full meaning of these diverse philosophic responses to the Bible is clarified through a dialogue with hermeneutic discussions by leading political theologians in the Judaic, Muslim, and Christian traditions, from Josephus and Augustine to our day. Profound and subtle in its argument, this book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of politics, philosophy, and religion but also to thoughtful readers in every walk of life who seek to deepen their understanding of the perplexing relationship between religious faith and philosophic reason. -- James V. Schall
Creatio ex nihilo is a foundational doctrine in the Abrahamic faiths. It states that God created the world freely out of nothing - from no pre-existent matter, space or time. This teaching is central to classical accounts of divine action, free will, grace, theodicy, religious language, intercessory prayer and questions of divine temporality and, as such, the foundation of a scriptural God but also the transcendent Creator of all that is. This edited collection explores how we might now recover a place for this doctrine, and, with it, a consistent defence of the God of Abraham in philosophical, scientific and theological terms. The contributions span the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and cover a wide range of sources, including historical, philosophical, scientific and theological. As such, the book develops these perspectives to reveal the relevance of this idea within the modern world.
Eleven original essays by philosophers and biblical scholars addressing the character of God as portrayed in the Hebrew Bible. Includes a critical commentary on each essay by another author, and replies to the critical comments by the original author.